Christina Ricci said that her looks played a part in nabbing a role in Speed Racer, the Wachowski Brothers first film since The Matrix trilogy. “Everyone told me I should play Trixie because they think I look like anime,” Ricci explained at the movie’s Tribeca Film Festival premiere on Saturday.

A live action adaptation of the 1960s Japanese anime series, Speed Racer had numerous false starts before finally going into production last year. Although she was invited to audition “very late in the casting process,” the actress said she got along famously with her fellow actors Emile Hirsch, John Goodman and Susan Sarandon. According to Ricci, the cast’s strong rapport made it easier to act against a greenscreen for the CGI film.

“We kind of forget about the greenscreen a lot of the time,” she
said. “It just became something that was sort of a funny thing in way.”

Her
co-star Goodman found the process a bit more challenging.”It was a like
doing a play with no money,” he said. “There was no scenery. All we had
was a table and a couple of chairs, if we were lucky. You really had to
use your imagination and focus on each other.”

Speed Racer was the festival’s closing night film. Also last night, the documentary War Child was announced the winner of this year’s The Cadillac Award. The $25,000 prize is chosen by the festival audience.